Note 670 — Chapter VI · LUNAR CALENDARS AND THE WEEK

G. Schiaparelli, Astronomy in the Old Testament, Oxford, 1905, pp. 134 sq. The fact that by the Babylonians Venus, as a morning star, was considered masculine and as an evening star, feminine (F. X. Kugler, Sternkunde und Sterndienst in Babel, Münster-i.-W., 1907-1910, ii, 19 sq.) must point back to a time when the different appearances of that heavenly body at morning and evening were regarded as those of different planets. Such was also the opinion of the early Greeks, who held the morning star, Ἑωσφόρος, and Ἕσπερος, the evening star, to be different bodies. Their identity was not recognized until the time of Pythagoras in the sixth century B.C. (W. H. Roscher, “Planeten,” Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie, iii, col. 2521). Similar misconceptions are found among primitive peoples. Of the Maori it has been said: “Tawera is their Lucifer and Merimeri their Hesperus, and under these two names the beauty of the planet Venus is frequently celebrated in their poetry” (E. Shortland, Traditions and Superstitions of the New Zealanders,² p. 219). Additional evidence is found among the aborigines of Sumatra (Marsden, op. cit., p. 194), the Hottentots (Schultze, op. cit., p. 367), and the Cherokee Indians (Hagar, in Boas Anniversary Volume, p. 357).